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More than one bootable primary partitions

Hi,

I have three partitions which I've created in cfdisk and want to write. I have a primary, sda1 with Windows on it, and two logicals, sda5 - my swap partition and sda6 - my Linux partition. I've made both my Linux and my Windows partition bootable.

When I select write to write the changes to the disk, it says that more than one primary partition is marked as bootable and the DOS MBR cannot boot this.

Just wondering if it had actually written the changes and if this mattered? What is DOS MBR?

I have three partitions which I've created in cfdisk and want to write. I have a primary, sda1 with Windows on it, and two logicals, sda5 - my swap partition and sda6 - my Linux partition. I've made both my Linux and my Windows partition bootable.

When I select write to write the changes to the disk, it says that more than one primary partition is marked as bootable and the DOS MBR cannot boot this.

Just wondering if it had actually written the changes and if this mattered? What is DOS MBR?

Thanks very much!

Matt. I

You can only make one partition bootable at a time. Most distros will setup dual boot for you and install a boot manager eg grub as part of the installation. You can easily stop your system from booting if you change MBR values and select a partition for booting which does not have a bootable OS - so be careful !
You will find lots of info on the web about MBR, the grub manual is a good place to start.
If you get the same windows boot menu when you restart your computer you have not updated the MBR.

Thanks very much! I just left the Windows partition bootable and the other two as normal logical's. That will work right?

Thanks again very much!

Matt. I

You should still be able to boot windows ! By all means make partitions for you to install your version of Linux but its probably best to let the installer sort out boot loaders & updating the MBR. I havn't used Slackware but I assume its got an installer that will sort things for you.